UK (Parliament Politics Magazine) – Helen Whately defended the Conservatives’ record on welfare, saying they cut costs pre-pandemic, as Labour questioned the £86bn rise over the last decade.
As reported by GB News, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary said the Tories would reduce welfare spending by £12 billion if they return to power.
What did Helen Whately say about the £86bn welfare rise?
In an interview with GB News, Helen Whately faced scrutiny over the rising welfare bill under her party, following Sir Keir Starmer’s welfare policy concessions.
Camilla asked Ms Whateley,
“How on earth did you allow it as the Conservative Government to get this high this quickly? We’re talking about £86billion in a decade, which is unprecedented. The benefits bill back in 1985 was £12billion?”
She responded,
“In the period between 2010 and the pandemic, we brought the welfare bill down. We did a particularly good job at getting people back into work, introducing Universal Credit, which was a big reform and hard to do.”
Ms Whateley said,
“It was controversial in Parliament, but we did it because it was the right thing to do to make sure that work paid what we then saw. More recently, coming through the pandemic was this rise in people claiming sickness benefits and the sickness benefit system not working for the world that we live in.”
While criticising Labour for halting progress on welfare reform, she claimed that initiatives developed before the election have been set aside by the government.
The shadow secretary said,
“We did work that reduced the stigma of mental health, but what we have seen is this huge rise in people coming forward with claims to do with mental health. The shift from face-to-face to more telephone assessments, the are things that need to change to fix the system.”
Ms Whately stated that the Conservatives pledged to cut £12 billion from welfare spending, as outlined in their party manifesto.
She said,
“I’m at the moment doing the hard work that you should do in opposition, which is working out if we get into Government in the next general election, what are the things that we would propose then to be able to bring down the welfare bill. If it goes up, as it looks like it’s going to, [it will be] nearly £100billion under this Government.”
The Tory Secretary explained that £9 billion in cuts would result from limiting benefits for individuals with less severe health issues.
She stated,
“There’s some work that the Centre for Social Justice published last week, and I was talking about this, which is where, because we see that the fastest area of growth in claims for sickness benefits is to do with common mental disorders.”
Ms Whately added,
“The Centre for Social Justice reckons you could save up to £9billion by doing that and actually then you could use some of those savings to invest in some treatment to support people with some of those conditions may need to be in work.”
The Shadow Secretary said the Tories extended conditional support to Labour’s welfare plans.
She stated,
“What we said to Keir Starmer, when he was struggling last week, and it was clear that he was going to be facing a defeat in the Commons next week, is that we would support welfare savings from Labour if they did three things.”
According to her, the Conservatives will use the savings to avoid raising taxes in autumn, which she believes Labour is likely to do.
Ms Whately stated she’s done with designing a plan to lower the welfare bill, arguing it’s the kind of serious work the opposition must do before the next election campaign begins.
Labour’s welfare bill
- Labour made major concessions to avoid a rebellion over welfare cuts.
- Existing PIP claimants are now exempt from stricter eligibility rules.
- Cuts now apply only to new applicants, not current ones.
- Over 120 Labour MPs had backed an amendment to block the bill.